Letting Go
by Mental Typist
Summary: "I couldn't let him suffer any longer so I let him go. Was it really that selfish?" Implied 5927. Character death warning!


A/N: (I am already trying to properly plan the rewrite of Chained Away) Hey so I'm just trying my hand at angst. For some reason my brain thought it would be a good idea to use Gokudera's pianist side and then kill him -_-

**Timeline:** This is like 3-4 years after returning from the future. Reborn is an adult here in my story. This story does not contain the Shimon arc and every arc after that so Byakuran never became friends with the Vongola.

**Warning/s: AU; mild OOC?, Character death, implied 5927, angst **

if you do not like any of those i suggest leaving the story

**What i listened to: Original Piano Theme - Separation (by nate combs on YouTube)**

_Flashback_

_'thoughts'_

**Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn.**

* * *

Dust filled the air as a silver-haired teen stepped into what once was a bar. Gokudera Hayato stepped over broken glass shards lying near the door and took in the sight before him.

Shelves of wine and alcoholic drinks were caked with dust. The walls were vandalized at one point with Sharpies. Random bottles of liquor that littered the floor also had layers of dust on them. Some stools were overturned. A large dark gray thing stood on the center left. Gokudera made a step towards it and the dust accumulated on the floor over the years flew up.

Ignoring the slight prickle in his eyes from the dust, Gokudera continued forward. He stopped when he reached the foot of the thing. It was so dusty you could hardly tell it used to be brown. The bomber's hand brushed across the top. The dust easily allowed the hand to become dirty. The mahogany wood revealed itself as the dust came off.

Gokudera reluctantly sat himself down on the equally dusty piano bench without bothering to brush away the dirty particles. He hadn't touched a piano for so long.

He allowed his fingers to brush over the dusty lid and reminisced for a moment how much he had missed playing the piano. He lifted the lid carefully with his hands and let his fingers rest over the keys. It had been over two years since he last played, but Gokudera still remembered his mother's favorite piece. He hit a few keys. The sound was rusty but miraculously still in tune. He took a deep breath and started playing the piece his mother had loved so much and had taken all her time to teach to him. He didn't even need a music score to know the notes he had memorized by heart when his mother was still alive.

A melodious tune flowed out as his fingers flew over ivory and ebony keys with practiced ease.

"_Gokudera-kun, will you teach me how to play the piano one day?" _the teen nearly froze at the memory, but his hands were automatically moving even while his mind got caught up in a memory.

"_I apologize Juudaime, but I promised myself I would not play again since the death of my mother." His boss was clearly disappointed at that, but did not force his right-hand man to teach him. The bomber immediately looked guilty for causing his boss's disappointment, but he would not break that promise no matter what._

After a few bars, the tempo increased. The soothing melody turned slightly angry as the pianist played faster.

"_What do you mean he's__－__?!" The small group crowding around the perverted doctor wore identical expressions of shock except for Reborn, who had his fedora tilted down to shadow his face, hiding his expression. The pervert's face was grim._

"_I mean what I said. The Vongola brat is dying from an unidentified poison. It's possible Byakuran was the one who caused it before you all came back." Shamal explained bluntly. Any other time, his ex-student would have threatened to blow him up for calling his Juudaime a brat, but now wasn't the time. If Tsuna died… none of them could imagine life without Tsuna._

_Gokudera would be looked down upon still and never be accepted by anyone._

_Yamamoto would have been dead ages ago._

_Mukuro would still be stuck in Vindice prison, still unable to hold any hope for the world._

_Chrome would also be dead from the lack of numerous functioning organs._

_Ryohei would have a normal life, but it wouldn't be extreme without a little brother like Tsuna._

_Lambo would never have been accepted by a big brother who was always there when he needed him most._

_Hibari would be aloof as always, but never able to calm his inner turmoil._

_And Reborn wouldn't have the pleasure of whipping a once useless nobody into the greatest mafia boss the world would ever know._

The song became louder and faster as Gokudera played on.

"_Tsuna wants to see you." Gokudera had sprinted to the infirmary where Tsuna lay weakly in bed. He plowed through the door and immediately ran to his boss's side._

"_Juudaime…" the Tenth Vongola's face was pale and tired-looking._

"_G-Gokudera…kun…" he whispered weakly. His voice was hoarse and barely above a whisper. The brunet attempted to smile the same smile that everyone had wanted to protect._

'Yet we failed…we failed miserably…we're all just a bunch of failures who can't do anything right.' _The bomber thought angrily as he clenched his fists. His boss made an expression that could be identified as a smile yet couldn't have been one._

"_It's not your fault…" he rasped as if reading Gokudera's mind. Knowing him, he probably had._

Why was that the only thing he could say without stumbling over his words?

_This time Tsuna managed a small smile. "Gokudera-kun c-can you p-play the piano f-for me?" the right-hand man's breath hitched._

'Why does it sound like something a person would ask for in the last day of their life?' _he didn't want to because he had promised himself he wouldn't touch a piano again. Yet… _'I don't want him to be sad the last days of his life.' _No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't run away from that fact._

"He doesn't have much time left. A few more months at most if we're lucky." _The perverted doctor had said. The poison was killing him faster every day. Their boss had gotten so weak that he couldn't sit up without someone's assistance. And it didn't help that he couldn't keep down the food he ate._

_A loud coughing broke Gokudera from his thoughts. The brunet boss was hunched over, coughing loudly. His pale hand reached for a tissue beside the bed to cover his mouth with. When the attack was over he threw the tissue into the paper bin._

_Gokudera couldn't look because he knew he would see the same thing he had seen for the past two months. The tissues all smeared with blood._

"_W-will you?" Tsuna asked hopefully. It might have been his imagination but his boss sounded…hesitant? It might have been because of that time he had said that he wouldn't go anywhere near an instrument that even just looked relatively like a piano._

_Two days later, the bomber found himself sitting on a piano, hands poised over the keys and ready to start playing._

_Tsuna looked at him from the bed, innocent eyes wide and expectant and happier than Gokudera had seen him since two months ago. The bomber closed his eyes and let his instincts take over. When he finally opened his eyes after he finished playing, tears were flowing down his cheeks. The teen risked a quick glance at his boss._

"_T-that w-was beautiful…" Tsuna whispered. He sounded on the verge of tears himself. "It sounds so sad yet it's so comforting." Tsuna closed his eyes. "M-maybe I can die w-without regrets now." he choked as sobs tried to claw their way out of his throat. He fell into a fit of harsh coughing again. This time, his friend unmistakably saw the blood on the tissue he used._

Gokudera hadn't even realized he'd closed his eyes until he opened them as he hit the last note. He let the note hang in the air for a few more seconds before his hands slipped from the keyboard.

Clapping filled the room seconds after Gokudera stopped playing. The sound of dress shoes clacking against the floor echoed loudly. Gokudera didn't bother to check who it was.

"I should have known you would come back to this place." A deep baritone voice spoke from behind him. The footsteps came closer but the teen didn't care. The barrel of a gun pressed against his temple.

"Reborn," the bomber acknowledged tightly.

"I didn't want to do this you know," it may have been his imagination, but the silver-haired teen thought the pressure from his temple eased for a second. "But what you did was unforgivable." Gokudera could see the man now, as he sat on the piano carelessly.

"It has been a while. Two years I presume? I thought you would have come for me sooner." Reborn shrugged.

"I kept on delaying as much as possible. But I know I cannot run away this time." The man leaned against the piano.

"Your suit will get soiled." The teen commented blandly.

"I have soiled more than just my suit in the years I have been a hitman. You should be aware of how many lives I have taken and how many more I am capable of taking away for years to come." The gun was still trained on him, but Gokudera didn't even flinch.

"Maybe…maybe you regretted it at one point."

"You do not regret what you have done however, Gokudera Hayato." The coldness left a chill down his spine, yet he still wasn't afraid.

"I don't," he agreed. "Because I know what I did was right." The grip on the gun tightened. Reborn tipped his fedora to shadow his expression.

"Have you ever hesitated even once to kill someone?" the question caught the hitman off-guard but he answered anyway. "No," emerald eyes moved to look at his face. "I haven't,"

"Would you hesitate now?"

"No,"

The teen didn't reply. The two Mafiosi basked in the silence for a moment before Reborn, gun still on Gokudera, broke the heavy silence. "He loved you, you know." '_I didn't want to be the one to kill the one he loved.' _The words were left unspoken, but understood all the same.

The bomber's eyes softened slightly and a ghost of a smile appeared on his lips. "I know," he looked down at his lap. "He didn't need to suffer anymore."

"Do you think what you did was right? Do you understand how much pain he felt? Do you know what you've destroyed by taking his life?"

"I did no wrong, Reborn. He knows－knew my reason and motive."

"…"

"I couldn't let him suffer any longer so I let him go. Was it really that selfish?"

"It was," the man did not mention that he also wanted to let his student go to end it all, but couldn't. But he knew Gokudera understood that. "You are a traitor to the _famiglia._ And I have my orders."

"So I'm going to die in the place my mother and father first met…how ironic." the Vongola Storm Ring glinted on his right hand.

"You shouldn't deserve to be a guardian." _But I would have done the same thing in your place. _But Reborn did not say that out loud. He knew that the Tenth Vongola's best friend understood.

"Goodbye, Reborn-san. I will be seeing Juudaime again."

"He was really happy that day you finally decided to play the piano again."

Gokudera chuckled lightly. Tears fell from emerald eyes and glistened as a bright smile lit up his face, a smile only a certain brunet named Sawada "Dame-Tsuna" Tsunayoshi had the pleasure of seeing. "Well, it was for his sake. But I'm not going anywhere near one ever again." He promised. Reborn frowned but didn't comment.

The hitman stood up. His fedora still covered his face but his mouth was drawn in a tight line.

He squeezed the trigger.

_That was a lie, too._

* * *

A/N: I hope I didn't fail too badly...Please tell me if you see mistakes, I'm good at making mistakes and not noticing until it's too late. Reviews are much appreciated!

A/N2: If you didn't understand the story, don't worry I didn't understand what I wrote either.

Basically, when Gokudera was playing the piano, it was 2 years after Tsuna died the words in italics were his memories before Tsuna died.

Gokudera killed Tsuna after playing the piano (in the flashback) to end his suffering like he said to Reborn. Since Tsuna was suffering from a fatal poison that was caused by the Byakuran in the future and Reborn couldn't kill Tsuna because he doesn't want to betray the famiglia and Tsuna's trust, since he's one of Tsuna's closest advisors.

The place Gokudera was killed is the bar where Lavina and Gokudera's father first met.

The last line was referring to Hayato's promise of never going near a piano again so yes, he did get shot and died.


End file.
